Limit Money, Influence

October 10, 1989

Of the more than $20 million raised in this year's excessively expensive gubernatorial campaign, a third of it has come from the real estate industry. Developers have contributed $7 million to the cause of determining who Virginia's next governor will be.

Those contributions represent 40 percent of the money raised by Republican Marshall Coleman and 12 percent of the contributions to Democrat Douglas Wilder. Put another way, if Coleman and Wilder were running for federal office, most of those contributions would be illegal.

But the two men are running for state office. And developers are taking full advantage of the fact that Virginia allows unlimited campaign contributions. In contrast, federal election laws limit individual contributions to $2,000 and those from groups - called political action committees - to $10,000.

Not even through the formation of dozens of PACs would it be possible for any one group to be as influential financially as developers are in the state's top race this year.

And although Coleman has benefited far more than Wilder - nearly half his campaign money, after all, has come from developers - the message from such contribution levels is very clear to both men: The big money comes from the real estate industry and the wise candidate will do nothing to antagonize development interests.

As Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, notes, developers see contributions as "an investment. Their financial interests are intertwined with the decisions of state government, and they are giving to influence those decisions."

The General Assembly should limit that influence, by passing election laws that limit the size of contributions. An industry that gives a third of all the money for a campaign that is unprecedented in its expense is too powerful by far.